Professor Mary Beard, our local multimedia star, has an interesting blog post about film crews. When they were coming to film in her space, the Museum of Classical Archaeology, she was irritated by the disruption and by how they always seemed to overrun their allotted time. Now that she’s the presenter out on location, she appreciates how hard the crews work and how tight the timing. Certainly the film crews we’ve had in the library have all been very well-behaved; almost every one of them has overrun their time but they all seem to be working incredibly hard to fit in as many hours of shooting as possible in any given day.
Along the same lines, the curators of manuscripts at the British Library have written on their blog about the vexed question of white gloves. Every library that allows its manuscripts to be filmed being handled receives feedback about the fact that we don’t oblige readers to wear gloves. There are lots of good reasons not to wear gloves while handling manuscripts. On the advice of conservators, we much prefer (and insist on!) clean dry hands.
